Please read up on the different layouts at the Sun layout tutorial. setBounds has no place when using layout managers. Myself, I avoid GridBagLayout unless absolutely necessary. Better here would be perhaps to use a BorderLayout with the graph panel BorderLayout.CENTER and the button panel BorderLayout.EAST.

Does the Button Panel have to be exactly 1/4 the width of the Graph panel, or can they be in that position, but sized as they naturally prefer? What is your ultimate goal for this layout and why?

and just quietly and embarrassingly, i only post when i get stuck, i have read
the sun tutorials a number of times :o but clearly need to read again :D what tends to happen is that you
try something, gain a little context but then somehow in the iterations you misunderstand something ... and viola :confused: ... and i guess i was trying
to just master one layout manager for all occasions...

The idea here was to have a graph pane which displays a graph on adjustable axis, so that when you adjust the size of the parent pane, the axis adjust ...
done ...
on the right hand side i have a panel of buttons so that the user can
set things like colour, max value for axis etc... done ...

thanks very much to hardwired for the code help :)

i wasn't using the weighty aspects of the grdibagconstraints at all and after
revisiting the reading ... i think i've got a better handle on things

i guess the conceptual part i wasn't getting was that your'e only really setting the preffered size for the smallest components ... textbox, label etc..